In my time I’ve unravelled lots of interesting problems. Some are workarounds often constrained by time and/or tech. Occassionally there aren’t sufficient in-house resources or a supplier has let the client down. Often it is repurposing old content for our digital era. Here’s a case study to inspire you.

Eager to crack open an image editing programme and get working on an image ready for Insta? Hang on a sec! Here’s a few points to consider before you do …

I was reading a post on a forum last week that asked about employing a formatter and it’s inspired these words as I felt it might be useful to untangle the language and roles. I also tested out Vellum to explore what apps offer and compared this to my bespoke skills. This post walks you though the Hello Lovely book page design process, explains what software I use, why and the stages, plus who to involve, what they do and why you may need them. The post covers print and ebook design across fiction and non-fiction.

You’ve heard the phrase ‘judge a book by its cover’, I’m sure and it’s very true when it comes to publishing, in particular, self-publishing when authors have more control of spend and choices. What to put on the cover and how to brief it, who to commission and who does what can be exhausting and overwhelming. I’m going to assume you’re an interested author. This blog post aims to give an overview of the styles of book covers, who does what and best practice. Grab a seat and a cuppa as it’s going to be a long but useful post!

Earlier this summer, Carter and Cone and David Berlow’s Font Bureau removed all their fonts from the Adobe Font library. In March, House Industries also retired their fonts. Carter and Cone’s decision took away 50 families or 700 fonts. This isn’t uncommon, not all business relationships are endless, but it has an impact on creative work.

Many people can struggle to find the budget for design. Posts that start with ‘I’m new, I haven’t got much money and I need a designer. Can I trade skills/do I go to a low cost site/competition or pitch site/do you know a cheap designer/can you work for exposure or haggle?’ concern me as it not only devalues design, it could also end up a false economy. Here’s a better way.

How you direct the question and handle the responses matters. How you feel about it matters too. After all, this is putting your brief to your designer to the test. How well do you know your clients?

How do you know which is best for the work you’re doing? In general, there are graphics formats suitable for printing which have a higher resolution and those for on-screen viewing or online publishing. Within each group, there are also formats that are better than others for the same task. Here’s the Hello Lovely run down on file types.